Vampires and fangs.

[theweaselking]

I'm thinking Vampire: The Masquerade (althought Requiem works just as well).

I'm thinking about what happens when you get a pair of pliers and pull a vampire's fangs.

By default, by the rules as written, you've just done a Bashing damage, *maybe* a Lethal. The fangs you extracted crumble to dust in a few minutes or hours, the victim regrows them as soon as he has some blood in his system to spare to heal the damage, and life goes on.

And this displeases me. I don't like it, at all. It lacks style. It lacks *cool*.

I'm thinking, of all things, of the Vampire card game card "Pulled Fangs", which prominently features a pair of pliers, and which causes an Aggravated damage. I'm thinking I don't want pulling fangs to do Agg - I mean, if for no other reasons than a guy with Potence breaking your jaw and sending teeth flying could do Agg, and I think the idea of yanking the fangs out of a torporous opponent causing them to crumble to ash is slightly absurd - but I think it should do more than just be another Bashing damage to heal instantly. These are your *fangs*. They are, fundamentally, the physical reflection of the essence of what it is to be a vampire. They're your tokens and your focus, and treating them like the were your fingers, or your ears, or your phlegm? That doesn't sit right.

And, really, what greater humiliation can there be for a vampire than having your fangs pulled? Trespass in another vampire's territory, get grabbed, your fangs pulled, and you left kicked to the curb at the outer edge of it? And how cool is it, really, for said vampire to hold on to your fangs and be able to produce them to taunt you, or as a show of menace?

What if the fangs don't regrow until they're healed *as if* they were Agg, even though they don't cause Agg when removed? Growing back after a day, a Willpower, and 3 blood?

Maybe your fangs shouldn't grow back at all, until the original set are restored (and then they re-root themselves and work normally again) or the original set are destroyed (and they don't crumble, outside your body). Maybe they should never grow back *at all*, leaving you fangless and showing your shame for the rest of your life, like a scar.

What do you think, oh fellow geeks?

EDIT: anivair presents an obvious method that I didn't think of: a very long time that is not permanent, say, a year and a day. Heal the "damage" immediately, lose the fangs for a year.

Comments

[dolston.livejournal.com]

If a mechanic is required, yes.